Towards Versatile Continuous-Flow Chemistry and Process Technology Via New Conceptual Microreactor Systems

Abstract

In the past decade, microreaction technology has been attracted much attention to the scientific community as one of the subareas in chemical synthesis. The microreactor improves the yield with higher selectivity, and also facilitates the reactions by simple, safe, fast, and green approaches. This review gives an overview on our contributions to develop versatile continuous-flow syntheses and process technology by exampling gas-liquid binary phase in modified PDMS microreactors, and process intensification for safe operation of toxic/hazardous chemistry by generating hazardous chemicals to end utilization via various separation techniques in newly devised systems as well as ordinary capillary reactors. Furthermore, it covers process technology for ultrafast organic synthesis such as submillisecond control of short-lived intermediates in a polyimide chip reactor. These works provide outlooks for integrated and automated flow chemistry via one-flow/feed to end concept, i.e., useful in pharmaceutical industry, toward enabling new and innovative chemistry beyond limits of a batch reactor.